Posts Tagged With: 3 John

Nothing gives me greater joy than this, to hear that my children are walking in the truth. (v.4)

Third John is addressed from the “Elder” again to a man named “Gaius” in an unnamed church. Gaius represents a contingent in this church, unlike the power-monger Diotrephes, who look to John as their teacher and spiritual father. As he approaches the end of this life, John wants more than anything to know that his “children” are being faithful to all he has taught them and all he has worked for.

As a high school teacher of Bible, I have been known from time to time to call my students my “kids.” They kind of are. I spend more time with them than my own! And by the end of any year, I really end up caring a great deal about my students. They are funny and I love the laughs. They are thoughtful and kind, and one positive affirmation of what we do in class can keep me going for months. I love to see them struggle with an abstract philosophical or theological idea until they understand it and can apply it to their own lives. But my greatest joy is when we meet up a few years after graduation and it is clear they are “walking in the truth.” That makes the long hours, endless grading, hard conferences, and discipling disappointments all worth it in the end.

Though never identified in the letters, the author of the Johannine letters is almost certainly the apostle John, the son of Zebedee, and author of the Gospel of John. Based on writing style, there is good reason to think the writer of Revelation is a different John. The John who wrote 1, 2, and 3 John was one of the inner circle of apostles and “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (John 13:23). Though he started his adult life a fisherman, he ends it as one of the pillars of the new, growing Christian church, a highly respected leader in the Ephesus area in particular.

“The Apostle John” by Rembrandt

The Johannine letters are likely some of the latest parts of the New Testament. Some date John’s letters to the late 80s. If this is correct, the first generation of those who had actually seen Jesus were dying and John was pure royalty. Given that no specific recipients are mentioned in 1 John, the first epistle was likely a circular letter distributed among a diverse group of Christians, especially in Asia Minor around Ephesus. Given the general nature of the teachings of the letter, that makes perfect sense. Second and Third John are equally as general and universal.

Most scholars situate the Johannine letters in the context of Gnosticism. This false version of Christianity really blossomed in the second century AD but it was likely an early version John was addressing. Gnosticism taught that the physical was evil and the spiritual was good. The fleshly body was wasting away and either an impediment to holiness or a temporary object of no consequence to be used and abused because only the soul really mattered. Gnosticism derives its name from the Greek word “gnosis” which means “knowledge,” because the truly spiritually enlightened ones have a special knowledge that sets them apart from their more earthbound peers. With these beliefs, a good Gnostic could not believe Jesus was fully human and flesh. One version of Gnosticism called “doceticism” taught that Jesus only seemed to be flesh and another version called “Cerinthianism” taught that the man named Jesus gained his spiritual nature at baptism and lost it before he died. We will hear John attacking this sort of thinking in his letters, 1 John especially. As the flesh was evil, one was supposed to either deny his fleshly desires through asceticism (seen earlier in Colossians) or indulge the flesh in licentiousness. This latter version seems to be the one John addresses.

John wrote 1 John to expose false teaching and counter any wrong thinking about Jesus that had cropped up. As one of the last eyewitnesses of Jesus, John could testify that Jesus was indeed flesh. John also believed that the libertine worldliness of pre-Gnostic Christianity was eroding the true Christian witness. In 2 and 3 John, John encourages faithful Christians to extend hospitality to evangelists he would have sent out even if powerful, possibly-Gnostic leaders in his church opposed him.